python - does cx_Oracle allow you to force all columns to be cx_Oracle.STRING?

Question

This is a small snippet of python code (not the entire thing) to write results to a file. But because my table that I'm querying has some TIMESTAMP(6) WITH LOCAL TIME ZONE datatypes, the file is storing the values in a different format ie '2000-5-15 0.59.8.843679000' instead of '15-MAY-00 10.59.08.843679000 AM'. Is there a way to force it to write to the file as if the datatype were a VARCHAR (ie cx_Oracle.STRING or otherwise so that the file has the same content as querying through a client tool)?

db = cx_Oracle.connect(..<MY CONNECT STRING>.)
cursor = db.cursor()
file = open('C:/blah.csv', "w")
r = cursor.execute(<MY SQL>)
for row in cursor:
  writer.writerow(row)

Answer 1

Could you use to_char inside your query? That way it will be forced to STRING type.

r = cursor.execute("select to_char( thetime, 'DD-MON-RR HH24.MI.SSXFF' ) from my_table")